13 Quotes from American psychonaut Terrence Mckenna

1. “Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced.”- Terrence Mckenna

2. “As the bonfires of knowledge grow brighter, the more the darkness is revealed to our startled eyes.”- Terrence Mckenna

3. “Culture is a perversion. It fetishizes objects, creates consumer mania, it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines.”- Terrence Mckenna

4. “Ego is a structure that is erected by a neurotic individual who is a member of a neurotic culture against the facts of the matter. And culture, which we put on like an overcoat, is the collectivized consensus about what sort of neurotic behaviors are acceptable.”- Terrence Mckenna

5.  “I don't believe consciousness is generated in the brain any more than television programs are made inside my TV. The box is too small.”- Terrence Mckenna

6.  “If you don’t smoke cannabis, you may spend your evening balancing your checking account. If you do smoke cannabis you may spend your evening contemplating the causes of the Greek Renaissance.”- Terrence Mckenna

7. “Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”- Terrence Mckenna

8. “The cost of sanity in this society, is a certain level of alienation”- Terrence Mckenna

9. “The only difference between a drug and a computer is that one is slightly too large to swallow. ... And our best people are working on that problem, even as we speak.”- Terrence Mckenna

10. “The problem is not to find the answer, it's to face the answer”- Terrence Mckenna

11. “We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.” - Terrence Mckenna

12. “You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.”- Terrence Mckenna

13. “You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.”- Terrence Mckenna